Watching a man with a mouthful of water, blindfolded, wearing a weight belt, blasted by cold air and trying to cycle fast as fast as he can on an exercise bike was not what I expected to see on Thursday. But, as a way of showing how Ross Edgeley had to spend six hours at a time, swimming through freezing water, half drowning while waves crashed over him and unable to see during night swims, it was effective stunt to get a volunteer on stage to show how tough the Great British Swim had been.

In November 2018, Ross Edgeley became the first person to swim around mainland Great Britain. When he finished, he revealed the salt water had destroyed his tongue, so it was no surprise it’s taken another six months for him tour and speak about his achievement as, I imagine, he had to wait for it to grow back(!).

On Thursday night, Ross’s Great British Swim tour reached Glasgow and, over two hours, he passed on some of the lessons he learned and some of the stories behind the swim – from how it came about, to what it was like to swim blind in the Irish sea during night swims. He also invited some volunteers on stage to demonstrate what happened – like the man on the bike with the weight vest, blindfold and mouthful of water.

Another had to cycle while eating a lettuce to show how you can both consume and expend 30 calories at once. Folk say you need to eat your greens and they say you need to exercise more, but no one says you need to do both at once…

The one tip that stayed with me though was this one. “Be naïve enough to start, and stubborn enough to finish.”

A good quote to describe most things we enter. Enter events with enthusiasm, but without completely thinking it through… then be stubborn enough to keep going when it turns out to be more work or more time than you first thought.

Or in other words: don’t think, just do it.

Because if you do think, you’d never do it.

Triathlons? Really? Swimming then cycling and then you go back out again and run. Why would anyone enter a triathlon who had any idea what it would be like?

Or run a marathon?

Or swim around Great Britain?

Maybe naïve is the wrong word. It’s not strong enough to describe most events. Instead, now I think about it, the quote should really be: “Be dumb enough to start, and stubborn enough to finish”.

“Oh!” said the receptionist, which would have been okay if I’d been checking into a hotel, or perhaps, phoning for a restaurant booking and I was about to be informed they were full that night. But this receptionist worked for my GP and I’d just asked her if she had the results of my blood test.

“You’ll need to come in,” she said.

Which would also be okay if I was checking into a hotel and they wanted me to confirm I was happy with my room. Again, not okay, when you’re waiting for a blood test.

“Can I come in this afternoon?”

I could hear her typing and checking appointments.

“I’m afraid not,” she said, “the next appointment is…”

Tomorrow?

At worst, the day after?

“Two weeks time”.

So, for two weeks, I had a receptionist’s “Oh” ringing round my head while I waited to find out what could turn a hardened medical receptionist, someone who dealt daily with every boil, lump, weeping sore and rattling cough that came through the surgery door, into an articulate conveyor of bad news.

And I’m a hypochondriac. See this post. So, by the time of my appointment I was convinced I had the Black Death. Even though I’d only been in for a work check up.

But the only thing the Doctor could say when he saw me was: “Why are you here???”

Which was scary, as I thought he was incredulous I was still alive and I really should have died from whatever I had by then.

It turned out everything was fine. The receptionist was meant to say that no follow up was required. Why she said “Oh!”, he had no idea. I was okay. I was normal.

Which was nice to hear and put my hypochondria to rest until I saw a rat on the telly and was convinced I had passive Scabies.

Anyway, I mention this because I’ve just had my latest work check up. A series of prod, probes and pots of pee. A series of test which led to a letter and another blood test and, finally, this week, the results and…

I’m normal. Again. Thankfully, the Scabies was just a scare.

But two interesting bits of my test stood out. One, was my lung test showed a lung capacity of over 120%, when the average is 75%. Way to go, left and right ventricle!

(Clearly the training has been working over Winter and Spring).

But also my red blood count was slightly below average. A result the GP said which was not likely to mean anything (then why mention it!) but more than likely a result of “overtraining” in the week before the test.

(Or not eating enough burgers).

So, this week, I’ve done nothing, except eat burgers. Which was always my plan after the Etape. Doing nothing, not the eating burgers part, that was just a bonus.

I wanted to take a break after six months of training every week, to commemorate my first target of the year – complete the Etape in under four and half hours – and to clear up any niggly wee injuries before a final five week push before Challenge Roth.

And the good news is that I’ve got my letter and passed my medical. Now, I wonder if I can also the Doctor to send a Bradley Wiggins Jiffy bag too…

As Manchester City win the treble in England – Premier League, League Cup and FA Cup – it’s time to remember where it all began: their first Premier League title in 2011, and that time I punched a fan in Manchester city centre during City’s open top bus parade – and it was all caught on a perfectly timed photo.

Whoops!

The greatest email I’ve ever recieved wasn’t sent just to me – it was sent to me and to everyone in my office. Over 250 people. It was from a new trainee. Someone who had not yet realised that “Reply To All” meant “Reply to… ALL”

Later, I discovered that he thought he’d sent a message back to his pal but, even then, I’m not sure his pal wanted the following message, because this is what he replied:

“I’ve just been to the loo. Did you know there’s two buttons. One for a pee and one for a poo…?”

Which he sent to everyone.

Not just his pal.

Everyone.

10 seconds later everyone also recieved the “Trainee@twinbikerunswork would like to recall his message” message. But, by then, it was too late. Everyone would recall this message from now until the day he died.

I’m sure, even at his funeral, his eulogy will say “Trainee may have become a Supreme Court judge and changed the world with his far reaching decisions but, I’m sure everyone can agree, his greatest achievement was accidentally telling 250 people how to flush the bog.”

I was thinking of this guy as I was running last week – because there’s a secret that runners don’t share with the world. A secret that every runner doesn’t discuss because it’s too disgusting to share.

Sometimes, when out for a run, you can’t worry about whether you’re going to use the big button or the wee button because you just don’t have time to get to a proper toilet. Sometimes, you have to improvise.

Normally, you’ve eaten too much or you’ve headed out too soon after a meal or a combination of the two.

The first few miles are okay but, the stomach growls, and you know that the only way you’re going to carry on is if, like a guilty sinner, you find some ways to unburden yourself.

I was trying to run 10 miles last week. A five mile there and back trip from the house. In the third mile, I received a warning from my gut. By mile four, the warning was raised to Defcon 5 and I had no choice but this choice: do I knock on someone’s door for an emergency stop or do I find a bush?

Now, knocking on someone’s door is something I’ve considered before. But I’ve never worked our what I would say. Hello. You don’t know me but I would love to get to know your toilet. Or help. Emergency. This desperate man would like you use your little boy’s room?”.

There was no way whatever I said was not going to sound creepy and it would be nature’s call I’d be answering it would be a call to the local police station to arrest the nutter with the crossed legs.

Instead, I searched for a park. Then, once I found a park, I searched from a spot that couldn’t be seen from any direction. I didn’t want this week’s headline to be: “Runner in park peek a poo scandal”

But as I sped away, safely, and without anyone seeing me, I started to wonder. I can’t be the only runner to have had this problem. I’m not the only runner to find themselves in the bushes when it’s not a trail race. But, no one has ever mentioned it before. What to do when you need the loo and you’re 30 minutes from home and your credit cards are in the kitchen where you left them?

So, in the spirit of openness, I’m sharing that question here. Just for you. What do you need to do when you need the loo?

And I promise I’ll keep the answer to myself.

Unless I accidentally publish this blog to everyone.

Oh, bugger, I have…

Recall! Recall! Recall!

Last year I caught the train to London with Iain.

“Have you got the tickets?” I asked.

An innocuous question, only made less innocuous by the fact the train was pulling out of Glasgow Central.

“No,” he said, “you’ve got them”.

Which I did – or didn’t. Because, while I had them on my phone with all details teasingly shown on my Trainline app, it was just a reservation and not the tickets themselves. The tickets were still sitting unprinted in the ticket machine at Central Station.

I could have cried. But, critically, didn’t because I’m a man and men don’t cry on trains. Not unless they’ve just read “A Boy In The Water”.

“A Boy In The Water” by Tom Gregory tells the story of how he became the youngest person to swim the English Channel. It’s no spoiler to confirm he succeeds, because, unlike most sports biographies, this one doesn’t rely on peril.

There’s a trend in biographies to tease the did he/she or didn’t he/she do it. The first chapter inevitably details some element of danger as the lone cyclist tries to cross the world only to inadvertently cycle into the middle of warzone, on the very day that the local Celtic and Rangers fans are watching the Old Firm game, during a hurricane  – and they get a puncture. Oh my, I definitely need to read all of this now!

Instead, A Boy In The Water, deals with trust and faith between a boy, Tom Gregory, and his coach as he’s pushed to swim further and further. And it’s this trust which provide the tension because it’s never clear how much of the goal was driven by the boy or the coach and whether it was right for an 11 year old to even attempt such a swim.

Written from a child’s perspective, the book is simple and clear, with the relationship explored through a back and forth between the swim itself and the three years of training leading up to it. Training sessions in Dover Harbour, solo swims across Lake Windermere, and a sense of sporting success achieved through coffee mornings, battered vans and digestive biscuits as treats. And very little discussion of swimming. There’s no passages describing swimming strokes, or the goals of any training sessions, just brief powerful descriptions of the swimmers, the coaches and the music listened to on homemade mix-tapes. And, an ending, which managed to show how powerful trust and faith and belief can be and what happens when they’re gone. I may even have shed a tear on the train on the way to work this week as I read the final chapters on the way to work…

You can buy it here: Amazon

Every Wednesday morning at 7am I join the Glasgow Triathlon Club’s swim session at the University of Strathclyde. I’ve been going along on and off for around six months and, this week, for the first time, our coach didn’t ask me to change my stroke or the position of my head or the way I kick my legs, instead I was asked to concentrate on turning around when you get to the end of a lap.

That’s right – I’m being coached on how to turn round!

The phase “like a tanker” was used.

Tanker should never be a word used with a swimmer unless you’re saying “hey, swimmer, watch out for that tanker!”

According to our coach you need to be pushing in and then pushing off and your head should act like a schythe through the water and not a brick.

All of which made no sense to me.

You swim to the end. You turn around. You come back. How can I get that wrong?!?

For the next hour every time I got the end I became nervous, not knowing whether my hand was right to push in an push off or if my head was as light as reinforced concrete.

On one lap, I even did a tumble turn. Not deliberately, I just sunk through indecision then tried frantically to right myself up while not drowning.

I know that swimming is all about technique but when that technique involves something you’ve never thought about before it’s very hard to change what you’ve always done. Thousands of laps of the pool have always seen me turn one way. Now, I’m being asked to think again. It’s not easy.
But it is good to be challenged even if, next week, I’m sure my next lesson will be how to climb into the pool using the ladder correctly.

Either that or, having mastered coming back, the coach will say “Now, let’s talk again about how you actually swim a lap correctly…”

There are many different records. Some will never be beaten. You can’t be the first person on the moon when Neil Armstrong got there first. Nor can you climb Everest when Edmund Hillary did it over sixty five years ago. Some records last.

Others are less serious. If you read the Guinness Book of World Record you’ll find a record for the world’s longest fingernails. A world record which literally doesn’t require you to lift a finger – in case you break a nail.

Or how about Etibar Elchyev, who took the title for ‘Most spoons balanced on a human body’ by balancing 50 spoons. He’d have balanced more but Sharon from accounts wanted to make a cup of tea and he ran out.

Or, worse, instead of spoons. How about balancing bees? Chinese beekeeper She Ping covered his body with 330,000 bees.

I think I’ll stick to cutlery.

But as records become devalued – you cannot compare spoons and bees with standing on the moon – we each have the opportunity to find our own records. If you join Strava you too can be a record breaker as every route or part of routes is carefully broken down into segments to create mini record opportunities. Do you want to be the fastest person to run along your street? Then create a segment and run faster than anyone else running along it. Or, if you can’t run fast, at least walk it while carrying 330,000 bees and claim the record for fastest person to be stung to death on your street.

Despite how easy it is to claim a record, record still matter. Or at least they do to me. We want to know who’s the fastest, who’s the strongest, who’s the most likely to open a cafe and not need cutlery. And I want to know who’s the fastest at running the only hill in Stornoway: The War Memorial.

It’s not the steepest or longest or hardest climb but it does provide a few minutes of running to take you to a vantage point over the whole of Stornoway and out to the mainland.

And for the last few years I’ve been trying to be the fastest to run up it. It’s my Everest, moon and jumbo onion (another official world record).

And two weeks ago I almost managed it. I almost had my onion.

The weather was poor. The wind was in the wrong direction. I didn’t even think I was running hard enough to make an attempt on the record when, I got home, checked Strava, and, blimey, I was the second fastest in the world.

Which is the one record no one wants – no one wants to be second! What’s the point of having 49 spoons on your body when the man up the road has 50?!?!?

So, in two weeks, I’ll be home again and I’m going to go all out for the record. I’m going to run like 330,000 bees are chasing me. This record will be mine or I’ll cry like a man who just peeled the world’s largest onion!